Cosmetic Skin Care

There are many ways to care for your skin. Excellent nutrition in the form of plentiful antioxidants supplied by colorful fruits and vegetables and high quality proteins and essential fatty acids, is the foundation of skin care.

Keeping Your Skin Clean

The next level of caring for your skin is gentle cleansing and exfoliation. Cleansing with something like our Chamomile cleanser or Lavender creamy cleanser removes the cells that are no longer properly adhering and dirt from the top. Exfoliating with one of our scrub or particle bars or acid based cleansers similarly removes dead cells a bit more aggressively and makes skin look clearer and glow if it’s done gently.

Moisturizing

Moisturizing helps to maintain the skin barrier. Moisturizers can also provide antioxidants and growth peptides in well designed products. These antioxidants and growth peptides are designed to be able to cross the outer waxy layer of skin to penetrate underneath to the living layer of the skin. The antioxidants provide a reservoir for battling against ultraviolet and pollutants that assault our skin every day. The growth peptides enhance skin growth and repair. We have an array of moisturizers that provide antioxidant and growth peptides.

Use Sunscreen

We can’t say this enough, sunscreen use is the next simplest method to maintain skin health, by protecting it from the damage of harmful ultraviolet light. It should be applied 15 to 30 minutes before sun exposure in most cases. Zinc based sunscreen works immediately, which is an advantage. All sunscreens should be applied plentifully, about a golf balls’ worth for the entire body, and often. Sunscreen reapplication should be about once every two hours or after sweating or swimming. Finding a formulation that is pleasing is important to ensure regular use. We have many of different types of sunscreen to help our patients figure out which are best for them.

Retinoids

Retinoids provide another well studied tool for skin maintenance. Retinoids enhance collagen production. Collagen is degraded by ultraviolet light and thins out as we age, especially if someone spends a lot of time in the sun. Retinoids decrease fine lines and even out skin tone by lessening brown spots. Retinoids come in many different forms and finding the right one is important because they can be irritating, but they provide the mainstay of cosmetic skin care. We carry retinols which are gentle forms of retinoids, in pleasing to use bases.

Cosmetic Dermatology Treatments

Treatments, such as Intense Pulsed Light (IPL), acid peels of various strengths from light to heavy, and laser treatments can be used to diminish brown spots, tone down ruddiness and larger blood vessels, as well as decrease the appearance of fine lines and refine pore structure. Regular microdermabrasion and facials also enhance the appearance of skin and make it look more even and brighter.